


Let's Go Back to the Start

by tardisandjam



Series: Tell you I love you, come back to haunt me [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Allusions to current season so, F/M, Lots of brief mentions of characters, This fic was an angst fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 12:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardisandjam/pseuds/tardisandjam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody said it was easy, oh, it's such a shame for us to part.</p><p>Or: How Jimmy Novak's Sister Is Too Entangled With Angel Crap</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Go Back to the Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thekingssong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekingssong/gifts).



> I'm sort of obsessed with Torn and Frayed because of that one line about how demons permeated their vessels completely, and wondering if it was the same for angels. So here's part one of a three parter. Maybe four, depending on how much emotion I have left in my heart. 
> 
> If you need visuals for this, I myself pictured Emmy Rossum as Grace.
> 
> I'M VERY AWARE I SCREWED UP THE TIME TABLE ON THIS FOR SOME STUFF. I tried to fix it, but in some places I did let it go.

My name is Grace Hayden Harper Novak. I'm twenty five years, seven months, two weeks, and nine days old. I know that's pretty goddamn specific, but hey, might as well know. I live in Pontiac, Illinois with my son James, my sister-in-law Amelia, and niece Claire. Amelia isn't around much- she has a job downtown. She's the breadwinner now, she's been that since my brother Jimmy disappeared four years ago. She tells me that he's dead and never coming back. I don't believe her. People just don't disappear like that. 

I only moved in about three months ago, after my son was born. Before that I lived with my boyfriend and my son's father, Alfie. But he's been missing for nine months now, and it's far too painful to step foot in a place we had together. It’s a place full of so many memories, and he’s just…  everywhere. I can't stand it. 

Maybe you’re curious about what I do for a living. Well, since Amelia’s always working, I take care of Claire and James. Claire’s sixteen, in high school. I pick her up and drop her off where she needs to go. And since James is only three months old, I keep my boy with me always. Besides. He’s all I have left of Alfie. Anyways… Sometimes I pack up, take my car, leave James with Amelia and Claire and take off for about a week to gank some nasty son of a bitch.

I don’t think I ever mentioned it, huh? I’m a hunter. Not the wildlife kind- the nasty monsters under the bed, the ones that inhabit your nightmares and drive you to insanity. Isn’t that fun? They’re all real, and they’re a bunch of dicks.

My mom’s side is all hunters. To be honest, my mom died in a hunting incident when I was six and Jimmy was eighteen. I was with her that day- she was caught off her guard and only had enough time to get me to safety. I watched her die, but nobody believed my story, obviously, I was a grief stricken, shocked little child. It was chalked up to an animal attack and she was buried in Windom, where her family lived.

After the funeral Dad fell into depression, so my Granddad Harper took us both in (Jimmy hadn’t left for college or anything yet, and he was still staying with us). He believed my story, the only relative to do so, and that’s when I found out it was all real. When Dad remarried when I was eight, he, his new wife, and Jimmy moved to Pontiac, Illinois. I stayed with Granddad and learned how to hunt, memorized exorcisms, was taught to defend myself.

Don’t feel sorry for me- I still had a decent childhood. I was best friends with my neighbor, Adam Milligan. He was more of a brother to me than Jimmy was, probably because of the age gap. (Adam’s dead, as far as I’m aware. They found his and his mother’s bodies in their home. I went to the funeral.) The only oddity about me was that at least once a week, Granddad and I would pack up and take off to go hunting. I’d bring my schoolwork and do it on the car on the way to wherever the hell we were going, because once we got there I became the researcher, the info gatherer. I was good with people, Granddad said, and I had to work it to my advantage.

That’s the way I grew up, until I turned seventeen. Granddad died of normal causes- old age, actually. The house was sold and all of the belongings sent to Pontiac, where I was supposed to go. But I argued, and threw a fit, and so Dad allowed me to stay with the Milligans until I graduated.

That’s when I stopped hunting. I was tired of getting beat up whenever I left, and so I just stopped. I buried the guns, hid my research in the boxes so it would be nearly impossible to find any of it again. Obviously I still kept things like holy water and silver around. Just in case. But nothing ever happened to make me think otherwise.

I left for college, you know, got on with my life. That’s when I met Alfie- I was in the library and managed to sort of accidentally run him over while looking for a book on the French Revolution (I never did find that book, by the way). And when I say run over, I mean I ploughed through him like a freaking bulldozer and knocked the poor guy on his ass.

_“Holy shit, I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Grace reached a hand down to help the boy back up to his feet, obviously embarrassed. “It’s my fault, I wasn’t really paying attention…”_

_“Don’t worry about it! You had that determined look on your face, I should’ve moved.” He grinned at her. “I’m Alfie.”_

_“Grace.” She shifted the books in her arms to shake his hand. “Are you a freshman too?”_

_There was a nod and a smile. “Yeah. Majoring in journalism. What about you?”_

_“Uh, creative writing. But I needed to get something for my history class. French Revolution, you know.” She smirked. “Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men, it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!”_

_They both laughed softly. Alfie stared at her for a second. “This is really forward, but would you like to go on a date?”_

_“I’d love to.”_

We went to the movies that night. Hell, I can’t even remember what we watched, but I spent most of the time leaning on him. He had his arm around me and we stayed like that until the cleaners kicked us out. By that time it’d started raining, and neither of us had an umbrella. But at some point we ended up running around in the rain on campus until we were drenched, and he walked me back to my dorm and kissed me on the cheek and wished me goodnight.

He was probably the first guy I’d ever gone out with. There was guys I’d been interested in while I was in Windom, but I was always gone so dating was out of the picture. Besides, Granddad didn’t like the idea of me focusing on something other than school and hunting. That sort of life didn't really leave room for romance, not at all. 

The thing about Alfie was that he made me feel, you know… Normal. I could forget that I was ever a hunter. After the third date I started to leave my flask of holy water at home, and by the fifth I left my silver knife. Somewhere, I knew, my Granddad was probably having a shit fit about it, but I was happy and normal and average.

He was good to me, really good, sweeter than anyone had ever been to me, and I adored it. He’d constantly offer me his coat, offer to pay for things, open my car door. He had this great sense of humor and he was clever, really clever. We got along really well for a long time.

But we were just, in the end, a normal couple. And normal couples did get in arguments, and argue we did. Both of us were pretty stubborn- which wasn’t exactly always a good thing. It meant that we wouldn’t talk for several days until one of us couldn’t stand it and gave in. It depended on the argument who gave in, though, but it was him quite a few times.

We graduated at the same time. That’s when it started to get really serious, you know. We moved to Pontiac together, bought this little apartment about fifteen minutes from where Jimmy was, got jobs to pay off our college loans. Alfie ended up at the Wiener Hut down the street, while I worked at the library.

It was hard for a long time, finance wise. We usually had enough to pay rent, get food, have things like TV and internet since we needed it, but besides that it was difficult. We slept on an air mattress and kept a lot of our things in boxes- we had nowhere else to put it, anyways. Obviously this led to a lot more fighting, and a lot of storming out. He’d end up at a motel, I’d be at my brother’s. But we’d never be away longer than a day or so.

We’d go over to Jimmy’s every Thursday for dinner and family time, which usually consisted of all of us watching TV and critiquing it. It was amazing- Jimmy would still be in his suit, Amelia would be all comfortable in sweats, Claire would be chattering about school, Alfie would still be in uniform, and I’d still be in my cardigan and skirt, but we were a family. Jimmy would always joke and ask when we were getting married, and Alfie would always reply that the day would come when the world saw fit to take me fully off the market.

I knew that Alfie always wanted kids. He had brought it up a few times while we were still in college, but I never said much. I was afraid, to be very honest. I was afraid that I would end up the way my mom did, dead because of a black eyed son of a bitch. I couldn’t think of bringing an innocent soul into this goddamn filthy horror show we called life. We had a lot of terrible fights over that, of course we did.

_“I don’t understand, Grace. You would be a great mother! Why don’t you want kids?” Alfie rubbed his face tiredly with his hands. He’d had to work overtime today and cover an extra shift, and he was exhausted. “Is it me?”_

_“Jesus Christ, Alfie, it’s not because of you!” Grace turned away from the stove briefly, frustrated. “I just don’t want kids, okay? I don’t want- I don’t need –that kind of responsibility, you know, and there’s no way I’d be a good mom. I’d probably forget to change their diaper for like, three weeks or some shit.”_

_“Well, I could do diaper duty.” He removed his hat and tossed it onto the table lazily, moving behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Come on, Gracie, you can’t tell me you’ve never thought of like, kids’ names and shit like that.”_

_“What kid doesn’t?” Her head tilted slightly to look at him, his chin resting against her shoulder. “But I just… I guess I want kids, but just not yet. You know?”_

_He sighed exasperatedly, rolling his eyes and moving to the fridge to grab a beer. “Grace, you’ve been saying that since we moved here! It’s always some other damn excuse, you’re too tired, too grumpy, too this, too that!”_

_“Well, I’m sorry if I’m not exactly in the mood to have sex and make a kid!” She turned off the stove and span to face him._

_“Grace, it’s not even that. You use every excuse in the damn book to put this off!”_

_“Well, because they’re all viable, Alfie. I’m not just saying it to say it!” She fixed him with a cold glare. “Maybe I just don’t want to bring a child into this shitty world!”_

_“You’re overreacting!”_

_“I’m overreacting? Me?” Grace rolled her eyes. “You use that shit every time I protest.” She shook her head and moved for her coat._

_“Where’re you going?”_

_“To Jimmy’s. I don’t want to deal with this shit right now.”_

It was tense around home, a lot. For a month we ended up breaking up and I moved to Jimmy’s for the entire time, until he forced me to see the fact that I was hopelessly in love with the dipshit. My brother played Dr. Phil and got us to talk most of our shit out, and we were together again. We didn’t bring up having kids again, though- we knew our limits in conversation, but obviously the topic still simmered near the surface.

Then things started to happen. And when I say thing, I mean like… supernatural things. One night Amelia called me in a dead panic over Jimmy, telling me that he was talking about angels and she found him with his hand in a pot of boiling water. Obviously my ass was digging out old texts and holy water and everything in the hunter’s handguide trying to figure out if my brother was either: (a) going crazy or (b) actually being contacted by an angel. The lovely rational side of me, the one who had a normal life with a boyfriend and a job, was leaning more towards option a.

But the hunter that I’d suppressed for quite a few years now was thinking option b. So what else do I do but go visit my brother and figure out which option it is?

(Spoiler alert: it was b, from what I could tell.)

One day he just left. He was just- gone. No note, no goodbyes. Claire said she saw him leave, but she wouldn’t say much else. I don’t blame her. Amelia was pissed at me for a good deal of time, though, because I didn’t help in trying to find him. There was no point. I knew that if there was something involving an angel and they were contacting my brother, that he was long gone.

Time passed, life moved on. I had to leave my job at the library because of budget cuts and ended up working from home, taking commissions for clothing and such (I was a decent seamstress, unsurprisingly- when your clothes were as ripped as mine were while I was hunting, sewing was one of the essentials). Alfie kept working at Wiener Hut- he even got promoted. Course I was proud of him.

Then the baby thing came up again. It was his birthday, and well… I’m assuming we all know how that ends. But we didn’t worry too much about it, I was on birth control, he had a condom, blah blah blah. No big deal.

That’s the thing, though. It’s the stuff you don’t worry about that gets you in the end, and about two months after that I started to puke up just about everything I ate. Obviously my first thought was stomach flu, I mean, I’d had that many times before. But no, I got suspicious and took the dreaded pregnancy test. It was a positive.

I’ll admit I almost had a breakdown. I’m allowed to say that. Considering I didn’t really have a mom growing up, I had no idea what I was supposed to do, you know? How was I supposed to act around a child, how did I change a diaper? What was the difference between breast feeding a kid or bottle feeding? Trust me, I spent a lot of time on Google. I knew that Alfie would be happy, you know, he’d wanted kids.

The only problem was I had no idea how to tell him. How was I supposed to bring it up, anyways?

Either way, Alfie never found out I was pregnant.

_“Hey Alfie?” Grace knocked on the doorframe, leaning against it silently. “Can we talk?”_

_“Not right now. Gotta finish taxes really quick.” He didn’t look up from the papers._

_“It’s important, Alfie, please. Two minutes.”_

_“I said not right now, Grace!” He spun in the chair to look at her, frowning deeply. “Just give me like ten minutes, okay?”_

_“It can’t wait.” She kept her hand from drifting up to lay on the almost unnoticeable bump. “It really can’t wait, Alfie, please. I’m not saying this because I’m being an ass-“_

_“Fuck, Grace, I just want to get these done before work!” He put his face in his hands, rubbing his temples. “I gotta try and get these done, alright?” Alfie glanced up at her, face softening as he saw her start crying. “Shit, Gracie, I’m sorry-“_

_“No, whatever. It’s not fucking important anyway.” Grace shook her head and turned to walk out, Alfie getting up and lunging towards her desperately._

_“No, Grace, really, it’s important-“_

_“Just don’t.” She didn’t look back at him, tears streaming down her cheeks._

_With a small groan he moved in front of her, grabbing her hands. “Gracie…” he said softly, squeezing her hands. “Whatever it is-“_

_“It’s not important.”_

_“Fuck!” Alfie gave up exasperatedly. “I don’t know why you do this, why you’ve been acting like this recently! What am I doing wrong, Grace? Tell me what I’m doing wrong!”_

_“You’re not doing anything wrong!” She was shaking as she spoke, trying to calm down. “You’re perfect, Alfie, and I don’t deserve-“_

_“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit!” The thought of the ring in his pocket weighed heavily on his mind. He wanted to force himself to stop yelling, to hold and comfort her, to make sure she was okay, but rage coursed through him. “I honestly don’t know how to act around you anymore, Grace! You’ve been all over the place these last couple months, and whenever I ask about it, you blow me off!” He covered her mouth, seeing her get ready to defend herself. “Listen, I don’t want to hear it right now.” Alfie glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to get to work. I’ll see you when I get home.” He snatched his hat and walked out, footsteps echoing before the door slammed._

That would be the last time I saw him. Actually, it’d be the last time anyone saw him. I waited up for him that night, nice dinner and all, apology ready to be made, and he just never came home. It was like he disappeared off the face of the earth too, and I was lost.

But being a hunter for seventeen years taught me to roll with the punches. I moved on, got a job and started working. I told Amelia about the baby. She told me she’d help support us both, since it was hard for me once I hit my third trimester. I moved out of the apartment, but I kept paying the rent for it- I couldn’t bear to let it go.

Guilt ate me up inside. What kind of person wouldn’t have that on their mind, that the last thing they did with the person they wanted to spend eternity with was argue and fail at telling them you were pregnant? Amelia helped me move past it a little (she also suggested therapy). And so a few months later my little boy was born. My little James Adam, James for his uncle and Adam for my best friend. He was so beautiful- he had my eyes, but besides that he looked exactly like Alfie. And that broke my heart.

So that pretty much catches you up to present day. They called off the search about a week ago- they don’t expect to find anything. Except, maybe, a dead body.

I hope not. But this reeks of demons, of the supernatural. So tomorrow I’m taking off again- a friend of mine, Garth, he shot me a tip. There’s something going on over in Lawrence, Kansas, so I’ll be going again.

In the end, I just hope Alfie knows that I love him. And that his son is going to grow up knowing what a wonderful man he was. 


End file.
